Super-Vaccine For Flu In Development

Adam9 tipped us to a DailyMail article about the possibility of a revolutionary flu vaccine that could work against all strains of the Influenza A disease. This 'holy grail' of vaccines would work on everything from the annual 'winter flu' to the 'bird flu'. The best part is that just a few vaccinations may provide complete immunity, unlike the annual boosters are current defenses require. From the article: "The new jabs would be grown in huge vats of bacterial 'soup', with just two pints of liquid providing 10,000 doses of vaccine. Current flu vaccines focus on two proteins on the surface of the virus. However, these constantly mutate in a bid to fool the immune system, making it impossible for vaccine manufacturers to keep up with the creation of each new strain. The universal vaccines focus on a different protein called M2, which has barely changed during the last 100 years."

Comments

They did have a cure for flu

[Timesprout]

But the formula was stored in a researchers gmail account.....

Re:They did have a cure for flu

[atomic777]

... but then they came to my office. The sheer concentration of flu-stricken people who don't seem to understand the concept of "sick day" (or can't afford to) and ventilation systems that seem to be designed to spread the virus around would have anyone sick in a matter of days.

Re:They did have a cure for flu

[bobsledbob]

Well, you got to save that sick day for something else. I mean, at work you're just sick and miserable anyway, there's no difference if you've got a cold or not.

Around here (in the Rockies), when you take a sick day, they call it "powder flu" which quite coincidently comes around just after a big snow storm has hit.

Re:They did have a cure for flu

[beckerist]

There's also "Friday Flu," which is generally preceded by "Thirsty Thursdays."

Re:They did have a cure for flu

[Anonymous Coward]

On a more serious note, here are some vital resources about the flu:

• White House on Pandemic Flu
• PandemicFlu.gov
• FluWikie

If you don't do anything else, read John Barry's The Great Influenza.

unchanged protein

[javilon]

"The universal vaccines focus on a different protein called M2, which has barely changed during the last 100 years."

I bet it will change in the next 5 years...

Re:unchanged protein

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. How do we know that once we start using this vaccine that the flu viruses won't mutate that particular protein in order to get around this immune system strategy?

Re:unchanged protein

[theGil]

"The universal vaccines focus on a different protein called M2, which has barely changed during the last 100 years." I bet it will change in the next 5 years...

I think your thought begs for elaboration. I thought the exact same thing (that it could change in the next several years) when I read the recap of the article. Though it has "barely changed" during the last 100 years, this doesn't mean it couldn't spontaneously change soon after the creation of the "universal" vaccine. Additionally, this could happen two different ways; the change could happen as a direct result of the new vaccine because the very nature of viruses forces them to evolve for survival, OR it could happen as a completely unrelated event (happening simply because it was already time for this particular protein to naturally evolve).

I hope we're wrong.

Re:unchanged protein

[CTachyon]

the change could happen as a direct result of the new vaccine because the very nature of viruses forces them to evolve for survival, OR it could happen as a completely unrelated event (happening simply because it was already time for this particular protein to naturally evolve)

There's no such thing in nature. Proteins don't "decide" to evolve, and DNA doesn't "decide" to mutate. All evolution happens because of random mutations in DNA -- random in terms of where the mutation is, what the mutation does, and when the mutation occurs -- followed by the proliferation (or not) of that mutation due to natural selection.

(There are some minor exceptions to the randomness of mutation, such as alternative mRNA splicing and certain regions of DNA that trip up the replication process, but they can be ignored for this discussion.)

In the case of influenza, mutations happen at an extremely rapid rate: the influenza genome is made of single-stranded RNA (no backup copy) and is copied by a viral transcriptase without the aid of any proofreading enzymes (no verification happens when copies are made). This means that the average mutation rate is roughly 1 per virus, on average. That's an insane mutation rate -- moreso since the genome of any RNA virus is almost 100% genes -- and it only works because influenza creates so many copies of itself in each infected cell.

Now, not knowing anything about the M2 protein's history except for what's in the article, the fact that the M2 protein has remained nearly the same for the last 100 years -- despite all these rapid mutations -- means that the dominant M2 protein is being strongly selected for. That means that viruses with a different M2 don't spread very well, as compared to viruses with the most popular M2. This suggests that, even if a newer vaccine causes the immune system to target only the currently popular M2, the viruses that escape the vaccine will be less effective than any influenza strain of the last 100 years.

(Of course, "worse for influenza" doesn't necessarily equate to "better for humans". It could be that the reason the current M2 is so popular is that it doesn't kill as many human hosts as the older M2s, which benefits both humans and influenza. But, given what the Wikipedia article says about M2's function, the smart money is that switching to the older M2 will impede the virus's ability to infect a cell, which is a win for humans.)

Re:unchanged protein

[A beautiful mind]

I think Richard Dawkins remarked something like that if doctors would undestand evolution we wouldn't have a huge crisis of drug resistant bacteria in hospitals.

Re:unchanged protein

[beckerist]

Because that's not how it works. Targeting one protein means to target one characteristic of the virus. Undergoing a genetic mutation generally means that an outside environmental force (ie: radiation, chemical, all in all evolutionary like improper fold in protein) will directly change genetic sequences resulting in a genetically different next generation. This might happen in only one out of a million splits (or mates) but it happens nonetheless.

If there are a billion* viruses, effectively we can say 1000 viruses have the genetic mutation. When we introduce an agent to localize said protein, we may wipe out all the viruses without the mutation but leave the 1000 "new" viruses unaffected, starting the process over.
With this said, there's no one saying that the affected protein was what made the virus lethal in the first place. Or that a change to that protein could even be possible without affecting the very nature of the virus. The point is that a medicine doesn't make the change, rather weeds out those specimen's that have already made the change.

*completely arbitrary example

Re:unchanged protein

[budgenator]

Not being a virologist, I'm not sure if this is applicable or not, but there is a minute chance that the M2 protein is the one that binds to the cellular receptor site that alow the influenza to be infective, so a change in M@ could be our salvation anyways.

Re:unchanged protein

[HeroreV]

All evolution happens because of random mutations in DNA

That's not true! There are other causes of evolution, such as genetic drift and gene flow. Also, mutation doesn't have to occur for natural selection to occur.

Re:unchanged protein

[fireboy1919]

There's no such thing in nature. Proteins don't "decide" to evolve, and DNA doesn't "decide" to mutate. All evolution happens because of random mutations in DNA.

I don't quite believe you. Start from this:

In the case of influenza, mutations happen at an extremely rapid rate: the influenza genome is made of single-stranded RNA (no backup copy) and is copied by a viral transcriptase without the aid of any proofreading enzymes

The "decision" is in the algorithm - in how mutation can happen. I don't think we really know it works entirely. We know that because of a lack of certain enzymes, mutation is more likely, but are certain sections of the DNA more susceptable to mutation than others? Further, are there less redundancies in one area than in another that wuold therefore mean that some mutations are more likely than others?

Given what has been said about M2, I'd guess that the answer to one of those last two questions must be yes. The mutation algorithm (i.e. natural selection, redundancy, and all that) "decides" that certain bits of the cell really need to be left alone, while other bits can be tweaked because its possible that a lot of values may produce good results.

Re:unchanged protein

[CTachyon]

Genetic drift is mutation. Gene flow only happens if there's already been a mutation (even if it's an ancient one that's been isolated for a long time). Ultimately, all evolution happens due to mutation.

Re:unchanged protein

[CTachyon]

The "decision" is in the algorithm - in how mutation can happen. I don't think we really know it works entirely. We know that because of a lack of certain enzymes, mutation is more likely, but are certain sections of the DNA more susceptable to mutation than others? Further, are there less redundancies in one area than in another that wuold therefore mean that some mutations are more likely than others?

Given what has been said about M2, I'd guess that the answer to one of those last two questions must be yes. The mutation algorithm (i.e. natural selection, redundancy, and all that) "decides" that certain bits of the cell really need to be left alone, while other bits can be tweaked because its possible that a lot of values may produce good results.

To your questions: No and no. (Both of those "no"'s have strings attached, but they're "no"'s in the sense that you're thinking.)

There is no algorithm used for deliberately causing mutation during the act of copying a gene. Copy mutation happens because the correct algorithm sometimes fails, not because of normal functioning. Changes in temperature and pH cause the copying enzymes to lose their shape, which allows random errors. This is why the body's innate immune response (fever and inflammation) works -- fever and inflammation (heat) cause an increase in the rate of DNA/RNA copying errors, bacteria/viruses are copying their DNA/RNA at a breakneck pace compared to human cells, and therefore the mutations affect the invading bacteria/viruses more than the human host. If there are too many mutations per daughter bacterium/virus, not enough daughters survive to the next generation.

The thing is, we really do know how DNA/RNA is copied. We've got simple but working computer simulations of eukaryote DNA polymerase, a good idea of the differences in how other polymerases work, as well as a functional understanding of how the proofreading/repair enzymes work. People also use these enzymes in labwork every day, all the time. We know what they do, even when we're not always certain of how they do it. And from what we know, we can say with certainty that the only time when the DNA/RNA sequence itself can trip up the copying equipment is when you have long stretches of a repeating sequence, because DNA/RNA sometimes slips, and if there's a long, repeating stretch it can convince the copying enzymes that they've re-gained synchronization when they haven't. However, because long stretches of repeating DNA/RNA always occur in the non-coding regions, those mutations make the DNA/RNA strand shorter/longer, but otherwise don't matter. (A gene with a repeating DNA/RNA sequence wouldn't do anything, because it wouldn't form a useful shape. It would either be a long, tangled strand [a repeated hydrophilic amino acid] or a clumped, tangled ball [a repeated hydrophobic amino acid]. Different proteins from the same gene would have inconsistent shapes because of the tangles, so the proteins would be useless as enzymes.)

The thing is, it's straightforward to prove using Computer Science that the copying enzyme cannot deliberately make errors upon recognizing some undiscovered, more complex sequence. The enzyme simply doesn't have enough memory, and it's not even Turing-complete -- it's really more akin to a finite automaton, a state machine. It can't remember what it's already seen; it can only see the DNA/RNA in front of it, and thus only the DNA/RNA in front of it can trigger an error.

Any deliberate mutation of DNA/RNA has to come from another enzyme that operates on the DNA/RNA independently of the copying/proofreading/repair enzymes.

A deliberate mutation-inducing enzyme, if one exists, might have an anti-sense RNA template attached that binds to DNA in specially marked "mutation-friendly" areas.

Do fix-alls really exist?

[dada21]

I was contemplating vaccines and software patches and other items that constantly need updating and never really solve the problem and came up with a theory of selling reality -- do you ever want to sell a product that never needs updating or repairs or replacement? Is it anyone's goal to truly fix a problem forever?

One of my businesses is IT consulting, and we really do try to fix our customers problems for good -- when possible. We find that solving problems today ends up giving us more work tomorrow through referrals, etc. We even have a popular warranty where we always fix things that break again for free (even if we lose money on the net), even due to user error. Yet most consultants love the repeat business -- why fix something forever if you're sure that only temporarily patching a problem is enough?

Are there any vaccines or medical products that really do anything permanent? Is part of the reason for temporary cures or fixes just the basic realistic knowledge that temporary cures mean job security?

I don't trust anything that is sold as a "permanent fix" for a problem -- I don't know if we humans are capable of doing anything so self-sacrificial as that.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[HMC CS Major]

In the cancer realm, there is an increasing number of drugs like Avastin that have shown abilities to attack a wide variety of cancers such colon cancer and lung cancer. Indeed, products like Avastin seem to create complications (specifically, increased risk of complications of high blood pressure in the brain and a neurologic disorder), but the primary fix seems to be more important than the secondary complications. That is, while the 'permanent' fix is flawed and creates later problems, often the later problems are more easily addressed than the primary problem, even if it's not perfect.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[kfg]

Are there any vaccines or medical products that really do anything permanent?

The universal, permanent cure for all that ails you; and it only takes a single shot

KFG

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Casts used when mending broken bones. Is that permanent enough? How about stiches leaving scars? :)

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[Watson Ladd]

Do you see smallpox around anymore?

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[smcallah]

When was the last time you had a family member catch polio?

Re: Do fix-alls really exist?

[Gospodin]

Counterexamples: polio, smallpox.

I think it's simply very hard to produce a panacaea. I find it hard to believe that human greed is the reason we don't have more panacaeas. After all, if I had a vaccine that prevented all infectious diseases (say), think how much I could sell it for! Greed would drive my interest in developing and marketing this vaccine, not in holding it back.

Similarly, if you could create a computer system that never needed upgrading and had all the capabilities of existing systems, you could sell it for a hefty markup. But this is extremely hard to do.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[TaoPhoenix]

Believe it or not, this is a scorching topic in the Business Case Study area.

Auto makers tried the Made-To-Rattle approach in the 1970's and nearly got wiped out. The Japanese realized that there are quite a lot of people to sell to ONCE, and selling their cars once was better than Detroit not selling anything at all.

The "Temporary Patch" mentality is the kind of thing people can trick themselves into from desperation. One of my old professors once said, "Suppose your customer wants to spend $100,000 with you. You get better results if you pass on cost savings; last year's $100,000 audit can be delivered this year for $75,000. But your customer "wants" to spend the same budget they always had - so just sell them some exciting new services."

Occasionally greedy companies can act to block something "too good", but nimble smaller groups by concept have to stake their claim at being better than the behemoth.

To reel this into SlashDot, If I'm gonna have you as an IT guy, quit patching my Windows box. Convert me to Linux. : ) And tell Tux to stop glaring at me.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[Dunbal]

do you ever want to sell a product that never needs updating or repairs or replacement? Is it anyone's goal to truly fix a problem forever?

      Ethically, yes you should. However the words "Business" and "Ethics" in the same sentence, especially when another word called "Money" is used, really generates creative results. The old adage applies - if you can't fix the problem forever, at least you should do very well if you can fix it better than your competitor.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[sgt.greywar]

Are there vaccines or medical products that are permanent? Are you serious here? Maybe just googling for vaccines would help you out here. Had polio recently? Whooping cough? Rubella? Hepatitus? Is having a shot once a decade "too often" since it is only "temporary"? Geez sorry medical breakthroughs that are equivalent to miracles aren't convenient enough for you.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[MightyYar]

I know that in my business (semiconductor assembly equipment), we introduced a new low-end machine that invaded a competitor's formerly exclusive niche. Our machine was much faster upon introduction. As soon as we got on-site, our competitor showed up and was able to nearly double the speed of their machine in a few hours with a software patch. The intended effect, no doubt, was to show how much better their machine was then ours so that the customer wouldn't bother buying our equipment. Instead, the customer was infuriated that our competition had been "sandbagging" all this time, throttling down their machines so that the customer would have to buy more units to meet demand. In response, we now get 50% of their orders with our slightly slower machine - just to "keep them honest".

You need to watch out if you are considering holding back from your customers, and you see it on the consumer level, too. The iPod wouldn't even be around today if Sony hadn't sandbagged with their Walkman follow-ons. Artificially restricting your product is usually not very healthy in the long-term.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[vertinox]

Is it anyone's goal to truly fix a problem forever?

I can think of two...

Laser hair removal and vasectomies.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[dada21]

I concur, fully, which is why we like to go beyond the call of duty and beyond expectations. Many of our customers are tech-friendly (some even ready slashdot regularly), so they're regularly surprised when we can beat even a low-end Windows PC into submission for the long haul. For us, it is more important to focus on the long-term goals of customer profitability (which is a great indicator of efficiency and even can be an indicator of employee happiness if there are perks to sustaining a profit-goal) rather than just on our own goal of profitability. We'll always make money, but there are times when we have to eat a loss because we didn't focus well enough on the customer's goals and instead focused on our own.

I'd never hold out on my clients because I know from experience (seeing some competitors fail) that it doesn't make sense it any competitive industry. Government, on the other hand, has absolutely no reason to solve any problem because they've got a monopoly on their "business."

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[Pharmboy]

But you failed to mention that your "cure" can cause lead poisoning, a serious and sometimes fatal condition.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[kfg]

Do you see smallpox around anymore?

Yes, although they keep it in a vault. We might "need it, " for, ummmmmmmmmm, "something."

A friend of mine is one of those unfortunates who caught polio from the vacine; although that issue was certainly addressed long ago.

KFG

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[MightyYar]

Government, on the other hand, has absolutely no reason to solve any problem because they've got a monopoly on their "business." I think that it's actually because in government, the "customer" tends to be special interests and lobbyists instead of voters. It is far more important (in the US, anyway) to raise a lot of money for your next campaign. Not that I can think of a better system, mind you, other than letting me be dictator. :)

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[kfg]

http://www.riflebarrels.com/articles/50calibre/mat erial_50cal_bullets.htm

Pick yer poison.

KFG

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[Belial6]

Perhaps they feel they have played out the flu profits. The pharmaceutical companies have lots of other diseases to sell temporary fixes for. It is also good to periodically come out with an actual cure now and then. Heck, it's even possible that as our population gets older, the pharma companies might be calculating that letting the flu run loose could kill enough of their very profitable customers that they would loose huge profits. This keeps the conspiracy theories down. The conspiracy theory question would be, "What percentage of the pharma industry's profits come from the current temporary flu vaccines."

Of course whether a permanent flu vaccine is a marketing gimmick, or it really is just now able to be created, doesn't change that it would be a very good thing.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be such a F'ing cynic. Most of the people in the medical field are driven by the hope of honestly helping people. Saving lives is a far different matter than making a buck. If doctors could offer a permanent cure they would, but your b cells have a limited life time, so what can you do.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[Lord Bitman]

start worrying when somebody announces a cure for all disease, ever.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[HiThere]

Occasionally greedy companies can act to block something "too good", but nimble smaller groups by concept have to stake their claim at being better than the behemoth.

Blocking the nimble smaller groups is one of the purposes of patents.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you are dealing with an infectious disease, the only permanent fix possible is the disease's total eradication. Because such diseases are cause by lifeforms, or near lifeforms, which will evolve to get around any preventative anyone can come up with.

Eradication is hard, and only possible in some cases.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[rbarreira]

Well, your post sounds very nice, but it raised a few questions in my mind (which you probably won't be able to answer, either due to not knowing the answers or for not wanting to tell them, but...):

1- Were they really artificially limiting the speed of machine on purpose, or did they just find an optimization?
2- If they were limiting the speed, wasn't it due to safety, reliability or whatever? In other words, did the patch decrease the reliability of the machine?

Those are important points, which of course I couldn't glance from your superficial description of the situation, but which would be relevant in evaluating similar situations.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

vasectomies

As I understand this is not always permanent even if properly done and verified as such. There is a very rare but non-0 chance of the things regrowing. Now castration on the other hand...

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't trust anything that is sold as a "permanent fix" for a problem

That's funny. You've been making posts here for years claiming that a radical laissez-faire free market system would somehow fix every problem under the sun.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[MightyYar]

1. Obviously I can't know this for sure, but I strongly suspect that they were deliberately holding back - they were likely "saving" the optimization for the next generation of machine. This is quite common, because it makes your next machine look like a generational leap (or marketing thinks so, anyway). We sometimes do the same thing, but never such a large jump! We were honestly blown away by how much they sped it up - we knew that they would respond well to our challenge, but we honestly didn't expect to be #2 again so quickly in terms of throughput.

2. Not likely. If I recall correctly, it was a vision processing algorithm that was sped up. I mean, any time you run the motors hotter you will decrease the life of the thing. But frankly, this equipment pays for itself very quickly and becomes obsolete before it wears out - the customer is much more interested in throughput than in equipment life, especially at the low end houses where they are just cranking out little LEDs and such. They even disable the quality control software on the machine. It is cheaper for them to just sort the defective units in test rather than stop the line. Frankly, I'm amazed that any electronic components coming out of China work at all for more than a few minutes.

I think that the customer was just playing us off against one another to get the prices down. It worked fantastically - there's not really any money to be made in that business now. We actually knew this going in. Our goal was not so much to make money, but to deprive our competitor of a cash-cow niche market that they were in. Now they have to compete with us on a more even footing in the high-end business.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[Overzeetop]

Very rare, from what my urologist told me. He went so far as to say if the first post-operative sample was clean, and your wife gets pregnant, she's far more likely to be having an affair than you growing a new, working vas deferens.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[budgenator]

no people, no birds, no pigs; no flu no problem.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[Kadin2048]

Not to mention the large stores of weaponized smallpox that the Soviet--I mean, Russians--are reported to have sitting around.

If you want to scare yourself silly sometime, you can read Ken Alibek's book on the subject ("Biohazard"). Or just Google "Biopreparat," which is the name of the Soviet agency responsible for the development of bioweapons (and of which Alibek was deputy director). They reportedly produced everything from smallpox and anthrax to Ebola and Machupo virus. (That they might have attempted to weaponize Ebola and Machupo is interesting, since it might suggest that they thought they had a way of controlling it; currently neither have human vaccines.)

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[BryanL]

DRM what?

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[MightyYar]

Exactly - if the iPod didn't have an open, DRM-free path (MP3) it would be the same raging success that the MD player is from Sony.

Re:Do fix-alls really exist?

[anominous]

ah, old joke: - - on a biology paper : between men and women, theres a vasT difference :S ....yes, it's the way I tell it that spoils it :(

Novel Plot element

[TaoPhoenix]

Terrorist starts a Bird Flu attack... but everyone has taken the SuperVaccine, so it fizzles.

Re:Novel Plot element

[Anonymous Coward]

If Terrorist has IQ > 50 or has access to the internet to read the news, why would they start an attack when they know everyone is immune?

Re:Novel Plot element

[TaoPhoenix]

Oh right. 'Dem Terrorists are smarter than Bush. Usually.

Shots Suck

[huckda]

Lucky me to actually have an immune system that deals with that.
Have never had the flu and have never had a shot for the flu.

Re:Shots Suck

[crow]

Of course, many of the people around you have gotten the vaccine, so you're getting the benefit indirectly. They don't get the flu, so they don't expose you to it.

Re:Shots Suck

[huckda]

I work in the school systems..I'm exposed on a grand scale daily ;)
but yes indirectly benefited by those who have received which 1/2 of the teachers do, doubtful many of the students do.

Re:Shots Suck

[dknj]

which begs the question, would we be safe if exposed to bird flu? i personally think i'd get pretty damn sick if bird flu came around.. compared to my roommates who have had a flu vaccine.

Re:Shots Suck

[asuffield]

which begs the question, would we be safe if exposed to bird flu?

Given that there isn't any evidence of it being ever transmitted by humans, yes, probably (unless you spend a lot of time with your hands in the guts of sick or dead birds).

Ridiculous bit of deliberate media hysteria, that one. A couple of people die from handling dead birds, the scientists say "well, it's not a threat right now, but just like every other damn virus in the world it could mutate into something that was a serious problem", a drug company realises "hey, we've got something that might be effective against things like that, although obviously we've never tried it because the virus we need DOESN'T EXIST YET", and the next thing you know all the media companies are reporting that this drug company needs to be given lots of money or the world will end.

There is no "bird flu" threat. There is only the possibility that it may one day mutate into a threat - which is a trait it shares with every single other virus in existence.

Re:Shots Suck

[huckda]

why, are they birds?

Re:Shots Suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that there isn't any evidence of it being ever transmitted by humans

Not true. In April-May this year, the Karo Cluster in Indonesia was almost certainly shows the bird flu transmitted from a human to a human.

There is no "bird flu" threat. There is only the possibility that it may one day mutate into a threat - which is a trait it shares with every single other virus in existence.

While it is true that the risk from the Bird Flu is minimal now, the flu mutates at an amazing rate within each host. It could be (and I hope!) that H5N1 will never make the leap to efficient Human to Human transmission but there will be another flu pandemic eventually. It might be H5N1, or it might be something else. H5N1 in particular has some experts scared. The super-vaccine in the article may save many lives if it really works. The problem with current flu vaccine production is it is way too slow -- a pandemic would be far too deadly before any shot would be available.

Read John Barry's The Great Influenza before you dismiss the flu so lightly.

Re:Shots Suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me preface this by saying that I do not worry about the bird flu and have not personally done anything regarding it. The odds of this particular virus mutating into something that could kill me multiplied by the odds that if it did mutate that I or my family members would die from it are low enough to push it below such time consuming threats as the 50' tree outside my house falling on my head or getting rabies from the neighborhood skunk ;).

There is no "bird flu" threat. There is only the possibility that it may one day mutate into a threat - which is a trait it shares with every single other virus in existence.

This is not accurate and is highly misleading.

Here is a better sentence:
There is no current "bird flu" outbreak. There is only the inevitability that a bird flu will one day mutate into a contagious threat - which is a trait it shares with every single other potentially catastrophic virus in existence.

Some day, another bird (or other animal) flu will mutate and kill millions of people. It's happened over and over throughout human history and we would be foolish to not have some sort of plan for it. Humans as a species are horribly forgetful about catastrophic dangers whether they be tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, volcanoes, droughts, viruses, bacteria, meteors and even more forgettable about the every day dangers of falling down stairs, automobile accidents, bad diets and too little exercise. Individuals are not capable of mitigating the risk for all of these dangers, that is what large organizations such as governments and corporations are for. Long term (10+ year) threats are the responsibility of government as no one else has the financial incentive or long term outlook to do anything about it. Putting a few % of the governments tax dollars into various catastrophic prevention planning/research will potentially save many lives and if they are ever used, will save many tax dollars in economic activity. Katrina is a prime example of this. Poor planning and research caused a major disruption in the economy and killed many people. Proper planning and response would have prevented much of the damage and deaths. Even so, the planning that had been done is the only reason Katrina didn't flood the entire city and kill far more people.

Re:Shots Suck

[Overzeetop]

I am certain that if we skipped immunization of the elderly and infirm in favor of immunizing all children and food service employees, we'd stand a much better chance of containing any outbreak.

Re:Shots Suck

[DarkProphet]

...favor of immunizing all children and food service employees...

I agree.

Though it is funny that you mention that. I've worked in the hospitality industry for many years, and since I started (~10 years ago), I haven't had the flu once and the common cold maybe 2 or 3 times. No other illness other than of the self-induced variety. Personally I attribute that to being exposed to the guest's germs (via handling used plates, glassesware, handshakes, etc) and subsequently having built up a good resistance. I think there might be something to that, as many of our new hires (that have never worked in the industry) seem to experience a dubiously higher susceptibility to infection for the first month or two on the job -- and then afterwards get sick less often that I believe is usual.

FWIW, its possible there is no causation and its all a fun coincidence. I am in my mid-twenties and I've never had any childhood disease, including chicken pox, though I've been repeatedly directly exposed. Maybe I've just got a good immune system.

Eugenics

[Clever7Devil]

Hooray for making large portions of the population immune to virii with this protein. Nothing like guiding evolution/adaptation ever closer towards pandemic.

Re:Eugenics

[ArcherB]

Hooray for making large portions of the population immune to virii with this protein. Nothing like guiding evolution/adaptation ever closer towards pandemic.

You're right! We should ban all medicines that fight diseases that kill millions because they might cause the disease to mutate into a disease that kills millions.

Re:Eugenics

[Dunbal]

Nothing like guiding evolution/adaptation ever closer towards pandemic.

      Why? Are you still waiting for the next smallpox pandemic?

Re:Eugenics

[Anonymous Coward]

The interesting part of this loop though is that make a cure to fight disease (pay medication $$$), another disease pops up, make a cure to fight disease (pay medication $$$). I think the real winners here are the biotech companies and healthcare industry. Just like lawyers, they will always "win".

Re:Eugenics

[Fallen Mongoose]

Everyone is born immune to virii as they don't exist. Viruses however are a different story.

Re:Eugenics

[Anonymous Coward]

Related to this:

"My chief quarrel with DDT is that is saved millions of lives" Alexander King, founder
of the infamous "Club of Rome" a think tank dedicated to Malthusian theories of
population control.

To cut the long short, I suggest you don't let yourself be injected with anything scum like
that concocts.

Re:Eugenics

[ceoyoyo]

How does a vaccine encourage pandemic? All a vaccine does is get your immune system prepared BEFORE you get sick, instead of after. You get the same immunity, but you get to skip the whole puking part. Or if you're old, young and/or sick you get to skip the dying part.

Great News - but why emphasise stockpiling?

[giafly]

Described as the 'holy grail' of flu vaccines, it would protect against all strains of influenza A - the virus behind both bird flu and the nastiest outbreaks of winter flu. .... Importantly, the vaccines would also be quicker and easier to make than the traditional jabs, meaning vast quantities could be stockpiled against a global outbreak of bird flu.

If the vaccine protects against all strains of influenza A, why stockpile it? Surely just vaccinating people would be simpler and protect them immediately. There are several mentions of stockpiling, so I really wonder whether this article is accurate.

Re:Great News - but why emphasise stockpiling?

[Nos.]

Good point. A vaccine is useless once you've contracted the virus.

Re:Great News - but why emphasise stockpiling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Charge $1000 per dose. No one will be willing to buy it until a pandemic breaks out and people start dying by the thousands. Then everyone will want it, thus the need for the stockpile.

Re:Great News - but why emphasise stockpiling?

[ruiner13]

Are you new here? Why give out for free when you can horde and use it for power and influence.

Re:Great News - but why emphasise stockpiling?

[cnettel]

There are plenty of vaccines that are giving too great side-effects to be administered generally, when the risk is low. Some guesses in this case might involve some pretty aggressive adjuvant to get the body to target a protein that you won't get immunity against after a normal infection. (Simple test: have a lot of people been infected with Influenza A twice in the last hundred years? Yep. So, obviously, the protein itself makes quite a lousy target and we need to provoke the immune system to actually recognize it. Such provocation can sometimes be quite nasty.)

Re:Great News - but why emphasise stockpiling?

[MightyYar]

Probably because it would be hard to compel people to get the vaccine. I mean, there is a vaccine available now for this year's flu, yet I sit here un-vaccinated. Hell, I doubt that my tetanus shot is up-to-date. People only get vaccinated when they are scared - my infant is vaccinated, my wife is vaccinated (she's in health care), and many old folks get vaccinated. The rest of us just take our chances with the flu because we aren't scared of it and we don't get it every year.

When something is more deadly, people get vaccinated. Everyone will be in line for an AIDS vaccine, and they certainly have no trouble getting folks vaccinated in the US against polio or smallpox.

You'll never "stop" the flu as they have with smallpox and polio (almost), because it jumps species too easily. If birds still carry it, it will be very difficult to control in human populations.

Re:Great News - but why emphasise stockpiling?

[dotbenjamin]

Of course it's not accurate - it's a Daily Mail article. The only shock is that they didn't claim that the flu virus was created by asylum seekers or rising house prices.

Re:Great News - but why emphasise stockpiling?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the article meant stockpiling as an immediate option. So if the bird flu virus hits before the vaccine is approved by the FDA, we will still have enough of the vaccine around for everybody. Once the vaccine is approved there should be no reason to stockpile it, since most people would have received the shot.

Is a cure enough?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Having a cure is not enough to prevent the disease from happening. A concerted effort to suply the vaccine is also needed.

Smallpox etc seems to have been handled pretty well, yet TB - a totally curable disease - still kills more people than 'flu.

Re:Is a cure enough?

[MightyYar]

True, but this requires one shot - then you are protected for some short period of time. TB is bacterial and has no vaccine. Most of the patients are either drug users and/or have compromised immune systems (e.g. AIDS). Worse, the cure is a 6-9 month course of antibiotics. It is hard to consistently take antibiotics for 6 months even if you are well - a heroin addict can be much less reliable and may miss doses or abandon treatment. So now we have antibiotic resistant strains... etc.

In short, it's a much different problem. Hell, the flu even goes away on its own over 99% of the time. Frankly, I think that if we could cure AIDS, I think that TB would largely go along with it in the developed world.

Re:Is a cure enough?

[kfg]

Finding Dr. Schatz:The Discovery of Streptomycin and A Life it Saved; Inge Auerbach & Albert Schatz

My Uncle Al. Thank God that my family has amounted to something, to make up for the fact that I haven't.

However, I must point out that there is a difference between a cure and a prophylactic.

KFG

Re:Is a cure enough?

[Dunbal]

yet TB - a totally curable disease - still kills more people than 'flu.

      Umm, where did you get THAT little snippet of misinformation?

      TB is not totally curable - in fact we are seeing a huge increase in multi-resistant strains of this bacillus. You have to take up to 6 different antibiotics (rifampin, isoniazid, ethambutol, pyrazinamide, streptomycin and pyridoxine) and supplements during up to 6 months or more. There is poor compliance with the treatment, which makes this a disease that is very hard to cure. I would also argue that although TB and its complications might directly kill more people (the death rates are similar in the US, 0.6 per 100,000 for TB and 0,4 per 100,000 for influenza), the consequences of influenza - especially in the elderly, are usually devastating for quality of life and prognosis purposes.

Smallpox etc seems to have been handled pretty well, yet TB

      Also I must point out that smallpox is caused by a virus, while TB is a very slow growing bacterium. Not the same critter at all.

Re:Is a cure enough?

[DrYak]

TB is bacterial

...and is therefore a little bit easier to cure, since we've had antibiotics for a longer time than anti-viral drugs, and since anti-viral drugs tend to be much more bug-specific than antibiotics.

and has no vaccine.

Guess what ? I *happen* to be vaccinated against TB. There are vaccine against TB. It isn't as widely used in the USA is it was in eastern country in the past or still today in Africa. The main reason that it is less used in the western world is that TB isn't very prevalent, and therefor, TB vaccine is only given to people at risk.
(A less important reason is also aesthetic : adults and older children may have a small permanent scar at the point of injection).

Most of the patients are either drug users and/or have compromised immune systems (e.g. AIDS).

In the western world. The largest part of the patient are in third world countries. The TB is prevalent there because of poorer population and harder access to medication, lower quality of life, etc...

Worse, the cure is a 6-9 month course of antibiotics.

...which is on of the reason that TB is prevalent in the 3rd world and that there, vaccine is simpler and cheaper.

I think that TB would largely go along with it in the developed world.

No, as long as there is still a source were the bacteria can proliferate they'll still be there around and still find ways to travel back to your home. There are lot of disease that are clearly under control - with both vaccine and treatment available - but that are still not extinct, because they can proliferate in some animal population (not even in another human population living somewhere else).

The main reasons why there's still TB around are mainly the economic situation in counrties where it's prevalent.
(then there also some other smaller reason like the fact that the bacteria can hide in cavities where they're less accessible to drugs, and also they can stay dormant for a long time).

Re:Is a cure enough?

[TheRaven64]

TB is bacterial and has no vaccine Every child in the UK is given the BCG vaccine against TB at school. Each school is visited for a few days every few years and every pupil in a certain age range is injected unless their parents opt them out. Before the widespread vaccinations took place, up to 25% of annual deaths were caused by TB (although typically the figure was closer to 10%). Now, less than 50 people die of it in the UK each year; it is effectively extinct here. A vaccination against the flu would likely have similar effects of the proliferation of the disease.

Re:Is a cure enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

As of this year Poole (in Dorset) is considered a low risk area and so that TB vaccine has become opt in here, I assume it is similar in other places in the UK with the exception of areas of substantial immigration. So I wont be vaccinated now but when I go to uni I expect I will get the vaccine as there is a much higher risk due to immigration from high risk countries.

Re:Is a cure enough?

[beckerist]

Hey you're good enough to plug a book! So let me get this straight...he really goes by Al SHATZ?!?

Re:Is a cure enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

quote\ The main reason that it is less used in the western world is that TB isn't very prevalent, and therefor, TB vaccine is only given to people at risk.

Wrong in the western world TB is considered to be in a crisis stage. It is very prevalent in the USA population(when compared to other modernized countries. Now maybe they don't give out the vaccine to every is mostly because if your rich you get vaccinated when traveling but the poor don't. It is a economic type thing. Keep the poor sick. So money well not be amassed into their hands.

Re:Is a cure enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

So money well not be amassed into their hands. ...or the poor amazingly enough do not pay nor have the insurance to be vaccinated...what is it with all the idiotic conspiracy nuts anyway?

Re:Is a cure enough?

[kfg]

Hey you're good enough to plug a book!

Second time too, and it's not even one of the ones I'm in, even though that would still leave the "F" part a mystery and there are some people here who've taken the trouble to figure out the rest. Don't they have lives? I've mentioned the farm my mother grew up on recently, this book contains descriptions of life there during The Depression. I never got to see it. It's now the North Dartmouth Mall parking lot or something.

All I got was this lousy ship's lantern off of the Charles W. Morgan out of the deal.

I can't say it's really a great book, but it is an interesting one, combining the memoirs of Uncle Al and Inge who caught TB while intered in a Nazi death camp.

So let me get this straight...he really goes by Al SHATZ?!?

For the past two years he has only used the full Albert, 'cause that's what's carved on the stone. He never saw the book.

KFG

Re:Is a cure enough?

[MightyYar]

Sorry, you are correct - there is a TB vaccine. I had forgotten all about that. However, it doesn't really work very well (especially in adults) and interferes with TB testing. In the US, they only recommend the vaccine to certain health care workers and other high-risk folks, but many of them get it anyway. We have a high incidence for a developed country because we have so many immigrants - incidence in foreigners is something like 9 or 10 times higher than in the US-born population. We also have large numbers of people living in homeless shelters, prisons, and nursing homes. These crowded facilities are full of people with weak immune systems, and the disease spreads relatively quickly. Even then, the incidence is something like 14,000 new cases of active TB a year, which is really quite low in a country of 300 million. Deaths number in the hundreds (700-ish?), so we're doing just about as well as the UK I think, with their 350 or so in a population of 61 million :)

All that said, there are several new vaccines undergoing trials right now, so hopefully one will be more effective in adults.

Re:Is a cure enough?

[MightyYar]

I don't think that this is a conspiracy against the poor. In the US, most of the cases of TB are in immigrants who entered the country with latent TB. Those with latent TB have a 10% chance of developing active TB. Most of the other cases arise in prison populations, homeless shelters, and nursing homes.

Your local health department will give you all of the antibiotics you want for free if you have TB... just ask. I know because my wife works in health care, and she got infected, and we used the free antibiotics. It is in no one's best interest to allow TB to flourish.

Re:Is a cure enough?

[samkass]

There are all sorts of factors that lead to the ability to drive a disease to extinction. Smallpox had no non-human reservoir, while the flu-- sometimes even specific strains-- can infect many mammals and can often be fatal or harmful to several species. Even if every human on the planet was completely inoculated against flu, the flu wouldn't be eradicated. As soon as humans stopped vaccinating, it would be back.

Re:Is a cure enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tb was almost completely eradicated in the US until they decided to ignore the borders and allowed in unlimited numbers of illegals, and NOW it is in a crisis situation.

Blame that particular situation on the two strangest bedfellows ever, who have both worked as hard as possible to destroy US soverignty and the productive middle class, clueless ultra-liberal "multiculturalists" who won't be happy until the entire third world is ensconced inside the US, and ultra conservative "free market" capitalist pirates, who really dig on that cheap slave level labor and how much it drives down wages for the legal folks here.

And people wonder why when you keep electing any combination of D or R you get overwhelming and compounding problems. Yet both camps keep insisting they can do a good job.

Why yes, they do-they do a good job of destroying what was at one time the richest most successful and most "out of debt" nation ever created, with the largest middle class and over-all outstanding health and social features for the most people, without relying on a nanny state idea from the authoritarian right or left. Over the last 30 years that idea has been totally smashed, gone the way of the dodo. Now? TB is tip of the health crisis iceberg, we have such wonderful multicultural things like *leprosy* staging a comeback and we have created the largest theoretical debt that has ever existed on the planet, babies born today are born into debt, all to fund those ultra left and ultra right loonies and their pet projects and pet insantities, which have all been utter failures. They borked our society, and they borked the economy. Good job! Vote More of the same, 2008!

Re:Is a cure enough?

[ShakaUVM]

We have a high incidence for a developed country

Huh? The US has a very low TB rate, certainly lower than any of the developed countries in Europe.

From wikipedia:
"In the United Kingdom, TB incidences range from 40 per 100,000 in London to less than 5 per 100,000 in the rural South West of England.[41]; the national average is 13 per 100,000. The highest rates in Western Europe are in Portugal (42 per 100,000) and Spain (20 per 100,000). These rates compare with 113 per 100,000 in China and 64 per 100,000 in Brazil. In the United States, the overall tuberculosis case rate was 4.9 per 100,000 persons in 2004.[39]"

Re:Is a cure enough?

[MightyYar]

Hmm, I guess my experience with it was out in San Francisco. I don't have any numbers, but they saw an awful lot of it at the public hospital there.

Consider my post an attempt to add to the misinformation here :)

Super-Vaccine

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha! Soon, we'll be immune to everything! Take that Michael Chrichton et al!

Re:Super-Vaccine

[Gospodin]

Won't help. Crichton will just write a novel in which chaos theory causes the Super-Vaccine to react with our genetic material in such a way that we all transform into dinosaurs.

Re:Super-Vaccine

[pilgrim23]

It has already happened in nature. Look at the sickle cell snemia gene in Negros resulting from the natural selection caused from a African maleria epedemic (gene that fights maleria, also relates to sickle cell). Or, look at that wonderful European experience with yersinia pestis: I have read decendents of Black Death survivors have some immunity to AIDS.
There are many examples. All of us today have whatever gene allowed us to survive the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic.

In other news...

[gzerphey]

Nature develops Super-Flu to counteract Vaccine.

Nature sucks... We should just take off and nuke it from orbit.

Re:In other news...

[Terminal Saint]

It's the only way to be sure...

Re:In other news...

[ermintru]

Not always - Where is super SmallPox, Polio, Hepatitis A, B, Measles, Mumps, Whooping Cough etc Vaccines have saved more lives than drugs and other medical interventions put together.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

F4cking A!

Re:In other news...

[dapsychous]

Wonderful, a super-flu. Should we go ahead and group off into "Las Vegas" and "Boulder Free Zone" now? Who's got dibs on the old black lady?

Re:In other news...

[HiThere]

Sorry, sanitation gets the prize for most effective medical intervention. Vaccines are up there, but not at the top. (I forget what's in second place. Indoor heating? Water pipes? Something we don't think of as medical.)

Re:In other news...

[ermintru]

"Sorry, sanitation gets the prize for most effective medical intervention." I didn't consider sanitation as a medical intervention (I was thinking pills, surgery, something you would get from a doctor and a lot of disease caused by poor sanitation can be prevented by vaccination). However if you consider sanitation medical then your probably right but both have brought huge benefits in saving life. The point I wanted to make is that vaccination is very different to antibiotics/antivirals, vaccines do not lead to super bugs and while they have their risks in general, especially for the established ones, these far outweigh any disadvantage.

Re:In other news...

[fireboy1919]

Attempts are being made to correct the problem.

We need to fix this for the children (TM).

Common cold next?

[crow]

Can they use a similar approach for the common cold next?

Of course, the only reason they developed this vaccine is because of the panic spending on flu vaccine research because of the bird flu. Without similar funding, the pharmaceutical companies will happily keep developing cold remedies instead of preventions.

Re:Common cold next?

[Daniel_Staal]

As I understand it there is no desease called 'the common cold'. Instead there are literally thousands of deseases, some related and some not, that humanity has adapeted to to the point that we show only minimal symptoms. The symptoms that still show are the symptoms that get them spread: coughing, sneesing, etc. Headaches and feavers are side-effects of either the primary symptoms, or of our bodies' fighting the desease.

So, no, they can't really. The flu is caused by one family of virus, and they can target a vaccine to that virus family. The cold can be caused by thousands of viruses or bacteria, so no one treatment (besides treating the symptoms) can work on all of them.

Outlook Grim

[soloport]

In related news, the stock has plummeted for McAffee and Intuit as researchers discover a cure for all computer related viruses:
"The universal 'vaccine' focuses on a different program called Outlook, which has barely changed during the last 100 years."

Re:Outlook Grim

[soloport]

Aw... Ruined it: s/McAffee and Intuit/McAfee and Symantec/ ...too hasty.

Anti-capitalist

[flyingfsck]

This anti-capitalist effort to destroy the flu vaccine industry must be stopped!

Gaia...

[flyingfsck]

Watch it brother - don't piss off Gaia - she is much older and stronger than you...

Re:Gaia...

[cHALiTO]

Yeah.. right.. thanks for the advice, Captain Planet.

(Man, I can't believe I remember that show.. I mean.. the power of HEART?? pfff)

It's in the Mail, it's almost certainly snake oil

[Alioth]

The Daily Mail is probably one of the most ignorant newspapers published in Britain, read by reactionary permanently offended right wing little Englanders (the audience to which it panders). Unfortunately, if the report's only in the Daily Mail, it's almost certainly wrong in every important detail. The Mail is one of the least credible papers in Britain.

So what happens when we kill off those viruses?

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

The universal vaccines focus on a different protein called M2, which has barely changed during the last 100 years.

Wild guess here, but I'm betting that there is a small percentage of the flu viruses out there will have some sort of resistance to this vaccine. Maybe their M2 protein will be slightly different and they'll all survive. Then all of a sudden, the only flu viruses left will be the resistant strain. With our luck these will also be particularly virulent. Then where will we be?

Re:So what happens when we kill off those viruses?

[iambarry]

I'm guessing we would only give the vaccine to people. Seems to me that other species are the major hosts to the flu virus (migratory birds?). As long as we don't let the birds get a hold of it, we should be ok.

Re:So what happens when we kill off those viruses?

[jlawson382]

Closer to a true all-flu vaccine than we are now??

Re:So what happens when we kill off those viruses?

[cnelzie]

The same place that we have always been, with one mutation away from another crazy pandemic the likes of which hasn't been seen in 100 years.

The secret ingredient

[Rob T Firefly]

The formula lies in a particular oleaginous substance which can be manufactured from refined cells of particular reptiles of suborder serpentes.

Re:The secret ingredient

[blue l0g1c]

...and administered on a plane?

History Repeating (Possibly)

[plaid_piper]

The Spanish Flu pandemic occurred, what? 95 years ago give or take? The flu base protein (M2) hasn't changed in approximately 100 years. Any guesses as to what happened the last time the flu altered itself at the fundamental level?

Re:History Repeating (Possibly)

[iambarry]

My guess :the oldest sample they can test is from the Spanish Flu pandemic.

From wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Spanish_f lu_research )

In February 1998, a team led by Jeffery Taubenberger of the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) recovered samples of the 1918 influenza from the frozen corpse of a Native Alaskan woman buried for nearly eight decades in permafrost

They don't think it changed 100 years ago, they just know it hasn't in the last 100.

Claims on Effectiveness

[The Step Child]

From the article:

The universal vaccines focus on a different protein called M2, which has barely changed during the last 100 years.

The main question that comes to my mind is how they can claim that this vaccine will require only a booster shot every 10 years. The drug rimantadine is believed to act by inhibiting the M2 ion channel - however, drug resistance can develop if the M2 gene has a chance to mutate. Presumably, mutations that render "anti-M2" vaccines ineffective are also possible, perhaps not necessarily in the same range of probability (one could argue that mutations are far less likely when the virus is faced with the immune system versus a drug). However - especially at the population level - could placing selective pressure onto the M2 gene lead to resistance faster than the company anticipates? I suppose time (and human trials!) will tell :)

Obesity vaccines

[Elentari]

"Zurich-based Cytos, which is also developing anti-smoking and obesity vaccines"

These people are creating "solutions" for lazy people who won't take responsibility for their own lifestyles - what makes you trust them to cure flu, and not just use this as another money-making scheme?

Super Flu?

[Lord_Dweomer]

Correct me if I'm wrong...but isn't the reason that we haven't cured the flu yet with all of our advances in medical technology due to the fact that the virus keeps mutating and evolving due to natural selection taking place when we apply vaccines? Won't this just serve to create a super flu? I really hope that the people doing this research (who obviously know quite a bit more on the subject) have already thought of this...

Re:Super Flu?

[no reason to be here]

they did think of this. it's right there in the article, in fact. the vaccine targets the M2 gene, which has changed very little in the last 100 years. despite all the mutations that have taken place in the flu virus in the last 100 years, the M2 gene has not changed. that's what makes it a good spot upon which to target a vaccine.

Re:Super Flu?

[Lord_Dweomer]

But my point is that once we start targeting this M2 gene, then won't we just end up with flu viruses that do not have the M2 gene?

Re:Super Flu?

[lawpoop]

Won't a "Super" flu only be "Super" in the sense that it resists the recently developed treatments and vaccines? In other words, a super flu really doesn't pose any more danger than the regular flu did before we had a vaccine for the regular flu. We are living with the super flu now.

Re:Super Flu?

[no reason to be here]

someone else already addressed this above in a different thread, but i'll rehash. any flu viruses that do not have the M2 gene being targeted propagate very, very poorly. the M2 gene is strongly selected for because of this. those flu viruses that do not have this M2 will not be able to spread efficiently enough to pose any threat. at least, that's the idea.

as yet another someone pointed out, though, this is being reported by what is perhaps a not-very-reputible newspaper.

Flu Virus Proteins

[reverseengineer]

The two proteins noted as being the current targets for flu research are hemagglutinin and neuraminidase- these are the "H" and "N" that influenza viruses are classified by (like H5N1 for the modern strain of avian flu of much concern). Hemagglutinin plays a major role in attachment of the flu virus to the host cell, while neuraminidase promotes viral release from infected cells. These have been the focus of most flu research because the body usually has strong antigenic responses to them.

M2 happens to be an ion channel protein for the flu virus, which is also necessary for propagation of the virus (it's thought to be involved breaking down the virus protein coat once inside the host cell, freeing the genetic material to be replicated). As the article notes, it tends to be more conserved than H and N- there may be a severe disadvantage for a flu virus to have a mutant strain of M2.

What the article does not mention, however, is that there are a couple of antiviral drugs already available which target M2. Amantidine and rimantidine both are thought to interfere with M2, and are already administered as antivirals against flu. (Curiously enough, they started as Parkinson's treatments- it was discovered patients taking them had serendipitous flu resistance). While a vaccine meant to target M2 might work differently than the adamantane-based antiviral drugs, it's worth noting that influenza, and H5N1 flu at that, resistant to those drugs is already quite common throughout Southeast Asia.

Everybody knows the only cure...

[butterwise]

...is more cowbell.

Re:Everybody knows the only cure...

[Anonymous Coward]

No no no.. Cowbell only cures fevers, not influenza :P

Mexicans Drink the Water in Mexico!

[WED Fan]

By living such clean and germ free lives, washing our hands continually, we are opening ourselves up to one Hell of a super-bug eventually. We keep Fracking around with nature, it's going to bite us in our collective asses soon enough.

I would rather be sick a few times a year, rather than vaccinate myself against all ills. Did we learn nothing from the over prescription of anti-biotics.

People in Mexico drink the water, do they get sick? Not like we do. Sure, we may not live until 120, but I bet you the entire American public will get laid low by the next super bug because we are losing our natural defenses.

Re:Mexicans Drink the Water in Mexico!

[Taevin]

Vaccines do not work the same way antibiotics do. Vaccines work by "teaching" your immune system, not by working independently of it.

Very simple overview of the adaptive immune system:
Your body has immune cells circulating throughout it. When they encounter a foreign cell, which they recognize as non-self by the surface antigens, one of the responses may be to "take" the antigen and then present it to other immune system cells. The other cells can "remember" that antigen and the next time they see it, they signal for the heavy artillery. With that signal, the body produces enormous numbers of antibodies against that antigen, greatly aiding in the eradication of the infection.

A vaccine is typically a weakened form of the pathogen, so receiving a vaccine is essentially being infected in a very controlled manner. Once your immune system recognizes the infection, it goes to work eliminating it and remembering it for next time it is encountered.

This is quite different from antibiotics which work by inhibiting the growth of bacteria, giving your immune system time to catch up. Given the extremely short reproduction spans of bacteria, they can quickly adapt to resist the effect of a particular antibiotic. Worse, they can pass on this trait by coming into contact with other bacteria. This is the main concern with antibiotics; if misused, antibiotics may breed resistance and then an infected individual may pass on the resistant bacteria before it is fully wiped out by their immune system.

Anyway, in short, vaccines actually boost the strength of your immune system by teaching it and keeping it active, hence the term "booster dose/shot" for certain vaccination regimens.

Re:Mexicans Drink the Water in Mexico!

[rrohbeck]

By living such clean and germ free lives, washing our hands continually, we are opening ourselves up to one Hell of a super-bug eventually.

Kids from super clean households have a weaker immune system (plus a higher incidence of autoimmune diseases) than the ones that grew up on a farm for example. So, they're going to be more susceptible later in life, forming a nice substrate for infectious diseases.

A checkout guy at the grocery store told me the other day that he never gets sick when the flu goes around (like during the last few weeks.) Sniffles, if that, but he gets bombarded by viruses every day, from customers, money etc.

Nietzsche was right. That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger. That definitely applies to the immune system.

Single protein, eh?

[Steve Fuller]

IANAMolecularBiologist...

So, wouldn't that imply that some people might be naturally immune already? Wonders of evolution and all that...

Anyone ever found any? If not, why not?

Smoking vaccine...

[b0s0z0ku]

The article mentions the same company has developed a vaccine that makes nicotine ineffective. Googling it, it looks like it's being "fast tracked" and will be FDA-approved in 2008-9. How long before a smoking vaccine is mandated by companies, schools, and governments looking to reduce healthcare costs? How long before vaccines are developed against other drugs? Personally, I *like* some chemical substances that give me pleasure (mostly weed, cigs, and coffee). I don't overuse them. I can understand abusers wanting to quit, but I'd hate to see drug vaccines be mandated even for people who may use occasionally.

-b.

Re:Smoking vaccine...

[Anonymous Coward]

put down the bong for two seconds dirty hippy

Re:Smoking vaccine...

[b0s0z0ku]

put down the bong for two seconds dirty hippy

OK. *spikes A.C.'s orange juice with LSD and then tokes up again.*

-b.

Re:Smoking vaccine...

[DarkProphet]

It'd be a sad day, for sure. But if flu vaccines are really that effective, why aren't the same organizations requiring mandatory flu immunization now? I would dare to bet that flu-related sick days cost the same organizations more money in lost productivity than the health care costs do.

As an aside, it is not really necessary to mandate the use of the nicotine vaccine when legislation aims to achieve the same end in many areas in the U.S by barring smoking in almost all public places. An 'alcohol vaccine' exists which makes the innoculant violently ill when alcohol is consumed, yet I've never heard of a company that mandates its use as a matter of course.

But, I'll keep my fingers crossed in hopes that it stays that way. I'm not quite ready to give up booze and smoke just yet ;-)

Re:Smoking vaccine...

[b0s0z0ku]

But, I'll keep my fingers crossed in hopes that it stays that way. I'm not quite ready to give up booze and smoke just yet ;-)

By that point, I'll have my own consulting engineer firm - taking my P.E. exams in 3 years. And I'll hire whomever I damn well please as long as they can do a good job at design. Whatever they do outside of work (as long as they're not serial killers or something) isn't anyone's business but their own.

-b.

Hyper bowl

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting points... all invalidated by the use of a pretend cuss-word.

Re:It's in the Mail, it's almost certainly snake o

[jb.hl.com]

THE least clearly being the Diana Excess...

Indeed!

[wwwrench]

I've recently visited to the UK, and was completely shocked at the Daily Mail and the general level of the tabloids. Google daily mail and Hitler, if you want to get a sense of how it is and was. They even serialised The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Sure, everywhere, there are plenty of crap media outlets. But I have never seen such a vicious level of lies and right-wing campaigning. You can't believe a word they say -- no need to ever pick them up. This is not just true of the Daily Mail, the general level of the tabloids is uniformly pitiful. They makes Fox news look fair and balanced in comparison. For example the level of anger that the UK tabloids deliberately generates against immigrants, gypsys, etc. through lies and smear campaigns is staggering. And I have seen the most outrageous lies leveled against people without the slightest restraint. You really have to read them to believe them. They aren't there to be a news source. They are there to entertain and scare the masses. You may discount them as being just fluff and lady-Di stories, but most people read them and they are hugely influencial.

Re:Indeed!

[Tim C]

They even serialised The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

I don't read The Daily Hate, and while I'm (clearly!) biased I think it depends on how they serialised it. If the nature of the text was made clear, and it was being presented so as to better critique it, then that's fine.

Given that it's the Hate, though, I doubt if it was done like that...

They aren't there to be a news source. They are there to entertain and scare the masses.

No, they're there to make money, through advertising and sales. The way they do that is by pandering to the lowest common denominator and especially the mob mentality, hence all of the self-righteous campaigning and muck slinging, celebrity gossip, and so on.

None of the tabloids are worth the paper they're printed on, imho; at best they're insipid. Don't forget, though, that most (all?) of the broadsheets have either switched to a tabloid (physical) format, or produce editions in both formats. Don't dismiss a paper based solely on its size and shape...

Vaporware??

[rlp]

I am not a molecular biologist, but this blog entry suggests that this may be vaporware.

Re:Vaporware??

[93 Escort Wagon]

Yes, Blogspot.com is where I go for authoritative medical advice and commentary...

Re:Vaporware??

[resistant]

Please, MODERATE UP THE PARENT!

The blog entry to which the guy is pointing is by the apparently well-informed fellow who wrote a Flu Wiki entry on influenza in general.

Interesting passages spring out, such as:

"[...] On Thursday they closed at 239p and yesterday they added a further 11p to 250p.The improvement marks something of a revival for the company's shares, which have sunk from a high of nearly 400p reached in 2003. The shares came under pressure on concerns that once a key contract to supply smallpox vaccines to the US had been fulfilled its prospects were limited." (Quoted from Times Online).

"Translation: M2 vaccine didn't work by neutralizing the virus but required assistance of T-cells. This means it would be insufficient for routine protection against influenza viruses."

"Translation: This one's the kicker. Vaccination against M2e worked in pigs to produce a good antibody response. Unfortunately, it set off a reaction that killed the virus-challenged vaccinated pigs faster than the unvaccinated ones."

The vaccine could not be distributed where needed

[Anonymous Coward]

In the latest study published a few weeks ago http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&si d=a6tRoyQugAAo&refer=us/)estimates around 62 million people would die from a pandemic outbreak and 95% of them would be from third-world countires.

The people who would NOT recieve this vaccine would not be the most poor, the people with the highest risk of dying.

Although this may appear callious, 62 million extra deaths in a year or so could do wonders for the environment. Also, think of the economic impact. With tens of millions of poor people dead, we can focus on the people left alive and improve society for all.

The man wants to keep the skinny man down!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Zurich-based Cytos, which is also developing anti-smoking and obesity vaccines, has showed that its version of the jab stops mice dying from a dose of flu strong enough to kill them four-times over.

Must be from some politician's attempts to get rid of non-smoking zones or from some lobbyists who can't stand people who are too skinny (I mean, we ARE in the minority now...). I'll say this much, they won't force me to take these vaccines. Take that, Big Brother!

correlation != causation

[Anonymous Coward]

Diseases do burn themselves out, you know. Once a strand has killed all the vulnerable people, the survivors have immunity. I wonder if there's even an unexplained mechanism whereby baby's immune system can learn from the mother's.

While I'm at it - the 1918 flu outbreak happened during the waning days of the first World War - there's probably something important about that...

There is much more to learn before we have a complete understanding of how the flu works. I haven't caught the flu in years, and I don't bother with the vaccines anymore. Why does my immune system keep the virus in check, while others get floored by the same strain? I don't think the company that is developing this "universal" flu vaccine are interested in the answers, because their customers ('us') wouldn't need their product anymore.

Re:correlation != causation

[Rolgar]

It's breastfeeding.

From La Leche League's website: Breastfeeding has been shown to be protective against many illnesses, including painful ear infections, upper and lower respiratory ailments, allergies, intestinal disorders, colds, viruses, staph, strep and e coli infections, diabetes, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, many childhood cancers, meningitis, pneumonia, urinary tract infections, salmonella, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome(SIDS) as well as lifetime protection from Crohn's Disease, ulcerative colitis, some lymphomas, insulin dependent diabetes, and for girls, breast and ovarian cancer.

Re:correlation != causation

[ahecht]

"Diseases do burn themselves out, you know. Once a strand has killed all the vulnerable people, the survivors have immunity. I wonder if there's even an unexplained mechanism whereby baby's immune system can learn from the mother's." There is a mechanism, and it's well explained. Antibodies are tranferred from mother to child though the umbilical cord in the late stages of pregnancy, and are further tranferred through breastmilk when the child nurses.

Re:correlation != causation

[compro01]

While I'm at it - the 1918 flu outbreak happened during the waning days of the first World War - there's probably something important about that...

yes, soldiers catch it abroad and bring it home with them. given how rapidly and often people are able to travel now, we wouldn't even a particularly large number of people traveling. day-to-day air travel would spread it quite effectively.

Disincentives for producing panaceas

[dakirw]

I think it's simply very hard to produce a panacaea. I find it hard to believe that human greed is the reason we don't have more panacaeas. After all, if I had a vaccine that prevented all infectious diseases (say), think how much I could sell it for! Greed would drive my interest in developing and marketing this vaccine, not in holding it back.

I'd agree that it's hard to create a panacea. One factor to keep in mind though is that artificially restricting the supply of a panacea could potentially result in higher profits (marketing only to the rich, for example). Using it worldwide would require a lot of government cooperation. Some governments would rather not see portions of their populations vaccinated, because of corruption or other political factors (rebellions, civil wars, etc.).

And certain governments would force the inventors of panaceas to give them the rights to produce cheap versions. That would undoubtedly benefit the population as a whole, but would serve as a major disincentive to produce said panacea.

Re:Disincentives for producing panaceas

[Gospodin]

...restricting the supply of a panacea could potentially result in higher profits...

This works while you have patent control. Once you lose the monopoly, though, this plan goes out the window, so this isn't really a long-term concern.

Some governments would rather not see portions of their populations vaccinated, because of corruption or other political factors (rebellions, civil wars, etc.).

Probably, but this has nothing to do with my point that greed isn't preventing panacaeas.

And certain governments would force the inventors of panaceas to give them the rights to produce cheap versions. That would undoubtedly benefit the population as a whole, but would serve as a major disincentive to produce said panacea.

Meaning that it probably would not benefit the population as a whole, unless one believes that no panacaea is better than an expensive one. But again, this has nothing to do with my point - I certainly agree that government theft disincentivizes research.

Yay, let's create even stronger strains!

[AugstWest]

Viruses don't die. They don't get eradicated. We're supposed to get them, we're supposed to develop immune systems, and we're supposed to go on with our lives.

The more we vaccinate for a virus, the more virulent it becomes. The more people get vaccinated for flu strains, the stronger they get.

I can see vaccinations for hospital workers and the elderly, who are in real danger, but for the rest of us non-emergency people, we should just get sick and deal with it.

Re:Yay, let's create even stronger strains!

[DarkProphet]

All of that is very true, and I agree that healthy adults really don't need, nor should get vaccinated under normal circumstances. But what if the next superflu that arises kills every single person not naturally resistant to it? The survivors' innate resistance is sure to cause a decline of the offending virus as a matter of course. That only serves to pave the way for even nastier stuff to come along.

I remember reading a statistic somewhere that a large percentage of peoples of european descent are naturally resistant to the bubonic plague because all the medieval europeans that weren't resistant at time died from it. Would it be better to still be fighting the black death instead of the super chicken flu du jour?

Any time we eradicate one life-threatening virus, there will be another one to take its place. Immunization does pit us in an ever-accelerating arms race with the next pandemic, but that is simply nature. Lives will be lost whether we do or don't choose to vaccinate, so which option is better? Whether we build up natural or artificial resistance, given enough time the end result is the same. Maybe the difference is that developing new vaccinations provides a catalyst for medical research, the result of which may have far-reaching implications in medical science aside from its original intent. Whether or not that is ultimately a good thing is left as an exercise for the reader.

Re:Yay, let's create even stronger strains!

[YoungHack]

I don't see this. It seems on its face to be an intelligent kind of argument, but I don't think it is. For one thing, getting an immunization is a way of developing your immune system. For another, there are documented cases of diseases essentially being wiped out.

It seems to me you are confusing viruses and bacteria. When we treat bacteria, we make stronger bugs. There's an obvious mechanism there in fact. We apply a kind of environmental stressor that selects in an evolution sense for resistant mutations of the bacteria.

As I understand it, the mutations that cause different versions of the flu actually occur in animal populations like birds and pigs. There are always going to be new versions of the flu because they will always exist and mutate in those populations. But I don't see any reason that humans have to jump on that train.

Personally, I am one of those people that gets a flu shot every year. So does my wife, who is in a risk population, and my school-age daughter. Why train my immune system with a week of crappy health, when I can train it with a 5 second 'stick' and a couple days of mild immune response?

Getting my young daughter vaccinated has been a huge boon. The number of ear infections and other infections (requiring antibiotics) in our family is way less since I started getting her vaccinations. When you look at it that way, getting our shots has meant less reliance on antibiotics. From a "let's don't invent super-bugs" perspective, I have to say my individual experience is on the side of getting the shots.

See Smallpox and Polio

[spineboy]

Smallpox has been eradicated from the planet, and polio is on it's last legs. Care to rethink your argument?

It won't work after the chinese use it

[goombah99]

Once the chinese vaccinate all their chickens it won;t be effective within the year. It's as simple as that.

Barely changed until now they invented a vacine...

[BlueCoder]

As soon as you create a vaccine and distribute it that's when evolution takes place. If there is no reason for a virus to change (by and large) it won't.

All the recent research shows how much of our genetic material comes from virus's to the point that one might consider virus's a third sex when it comes to spreading genetic material and genes. Do we really want bypass what gives us genetic diversity and a strong immune system?

TB vaccines

[Anonymous Coward]

The main reason that it is less used in the western world is that TB isn't very prevalent, and therefor, TB vaccine is only given to people at risk. (A less important reason is also aesthetic : adults and older children may have a small permanent scar at the point of injection).

Wrong. The main reason the TB vaccine isn't given in the US is that it is largely ineffective against common forms of TB. Its primary purpose is to protect children against a particularly virulent and rapidly deadly form of TB, but that's very rare in the US.

The price you pay for a TB vaccination is that after you have received it, there is no way to test immunologically for whether you're infected with TB. Overall, traditional TB vaccines are probably a bad tradeoff in developed nations.

Maybe eventually, we'll have good TB vaccines, but so far, we don't.

More on this

[Rob Simpson]

The M2 mutants that are resistant to amantadine don't seem to have reduced virulence: Generation and Characterization of Recombinant Influenza A (H1N1) Viruses Harboring Amantadine Resistance Mutations

However, even if strains with mutant forms of M2 can be virulent and not be recognized by antigens resulting from this vaccine, the possibilities are probably going to be more limited than the eternally shuffled deck of HA and NA proteins. Hopefully. This doesn't sound too good, though:

There was almost no impact of the different M2 mutations on viral fitness, as assessed on the basis of the size of viral plaques generated in the absence of drug and of virus titers following MDBK infection at a low MOI (Fig. 1 and 2). These findings are in agreement with a previous report showing that influenza A/H3N2 recombinant viruses can undergo multiple cycles of replication without M2 ion channel activity (15). In that study, recombinants containing the M2 gene of A/Udorn/307/72 (H3N2) with V27T, A30P, and S31N mutations were found to replicate as efficiently as the recombinant WT in Madin-Darby canine kidney cells. Also, a recombinant mutant which had no detectable M2 ion channel activity due to a deletion in the transmembrane domain of the protein (M2-del29-31) exhibited replication efficiency in vitro similar to that of the WT virus (15).

But it's another story whether these strains would succeed in the wild.

By the way, the resistance of H5N1 to amantadine seems primarily due to China giving it to chickens. Wonderful. But the U.S. and Canada still give low-dose antibiotics in livestock feed, so I guess we don't have a drumstick to stand on.

and then there's evolution

[misanthrope101]

You won't kill all the flu viruses (is that a word?), because some will be resistant, or the vaccine wasn't full-strength, or something. Survivors will reproduce like crazy because their weaker kin aren't there to compete with, and the weakest of THEIR descendents will be killed off, leaving a slightly more resistant population. Rinse, wash, repeat, and any countermeasure short of complete eradication will be worked around by nature. The only people who believe in a magic-bullet cure are the ones too ignorant or obstinate to believe in evolution. A magic-bullet cure only works in a world without genetic variation, the foundation (though not sole component) of evolution.

Re:Barely changed until now they invented a vacine

[jgoemat]

[...]
Current flu vaccines focus on two proteins on the surface of the virus. However, these constantly mutate in a bid to fool the immune system, making it impossible for vaccine manufacturers to keep up with the creation of each new strain. The universal vaccines focus on a different protein called M2, which has barely changed during the last 100 years."

So they create a new vaccine every year, and the next year the virus has different proteins. What do they think will happen when they produce a vaccine for this other protein? :)

Building Resistance

[xeeazgk]

If we do this, aren't we putting evolutionary pressure on the virus to change the vulnerable protein too? I don't know too much about viral evolution, but it seems like it could be a problem, couldn' it?